


entirely

by ninemoons42



Category: Sense8 (TV), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Inspired By Sense8, Inspired by Fanfiction, Inspired by Music, Min Yoongi-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 08:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Some days he can tell: some days he can actually taste and smell and feel andknow, and on those days he aches and aches and everything leaves a sour bitter taste in his mouth, like slivers stuck between his teeth, and he doesn’t even want to think about getting out of bed, when he can tell, when he wakes up and he knows.Some days, however, are the complete opposite, when he knows for certain sure that he’s not going mad in the entirely wrong and entirely hellish way.(This is one of those latter days/nights.)





	entirely

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [you're a heartbeat away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19435078) by [anyadisee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyadisee/pseuds/anyadisee). 

> Sticking to Sense8 canon here, requiring a common birthday: in this case, that's 12 June 1992. They are all 27 in this fic; there are no honorifics in use.
> 
> Since there's discussion of national service, just the note to say that -- Joon and Jin did theirs starting 2013, and Yoongi started his in 2014. The other four did theirs together, starting 2017, so they're about to finish up in the present day. 
> 
> Musical inspiration: the Brit Rock remix of Spring Day // the entirety of the mono. mixtape // the Sense8 version of Feeling Good.
> 
> Moodboard created by the mods of the [Sing Me Your Heart fest](https://twitter.com/fic_fest?s=09) on twitter ([here](https://twitter.com/fic_fest/status/1275462602706038786?s=19)).

\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Some days he can tell: some days he can actually taste and smell and feel and _know_, and on those days he aches and aches and everything leaves a sour bitter taste in his mouth, like slivers stuck between his teeth, and he doesn’t even want to think about getting out of bed, when he can tell, when he wakes up and he knows.

Some days, however, are the complete opposite, when he knows for certain sure that he’s not going mad in the entirely wrong and entirely hellish way.

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up next to a long lanky shape wrapped in plant-scents. The very very very occasional peek of vine-lines, ink wrapped around arms and wrists and all the way up to the bases of the palms. Smell of good rich earth and just-too-ripe fruits trapped between elegant fingers, and the seemingly graceful twirl and spin of a fineline marker, over dot-gridded sheets of paper. The weird interjecting notes of heated silicon and plastic and glass and copper. Dimples in warm skin, framing an easy and sweet and thoughtful smile, or perhaps as punctuation in a helpless adoring grin.

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up next to broad broad shoulders. The type of quietly industrious hands that would fit in just fine at an elegantly aged keyboard, or wrapped knowing and sure around a chef’s knife, or -- even sowing chaos. Starting up a prank war, but never to hurt anyone’s feelings. Harmless weird. Is there even really such a thing? Does hiding an alpaca-faced plush toy in a bag of books count? Does making an entire multi-course meal to share with only one other person count -- or is it in the multiplication of that same expanded meal to feed an entire rowdy table of equally bright grins? Why would anyone even do such a thing? And who cares for the person who cares so much?

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up next to an easy, ready, smoothly rakish smile. Lopsided or wide or even heart-shaped, in the throes of a particularly funny joke, in the radiance of sunlight. The liquid-easy grace of movement, whatever that turns out to be: the flick of the hands to emphasize some kind of musical statement, or the flip of the legs and the feet to cap off a series of steps and a story told entirely in movements. Voice in its many registers, from a teacher’s growl and its coaxing authority, to a soft lilted beatboxing cadence.

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up next to slender sweetly clinging strength. The hum of rhythm and movement even in the quiet moments. Chest expanding with every strong breath, heart full of bright music, and a voice that could rival any otherworldly choir, extended scales and extended melody. This, too, this is a presence that dances, emotional and powerful, nearly to the point of watching every single gesture. Analysis, interpretation, thoughts churning, body aligning, telling the whole story.

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up next to a low low hum that vibrates. That soothes and stings in equal measure. Hands wreathed in the smells of creating things, of translating thoughts into something that human senses can better perceive. Shapes and lines and the pleasant sharpness of paint or ink or dye -- or perhaps the actual sharpness of a pair of scissors, a handful of threaded needles, an entire full pincushion and buttons in unusual shapes. Color, color, this presence that is entirely vibrant, that fills every room, that fills every breath.

Knows for sure that -- he can wake up to a flutter of a heartbeat, strangely softly sweet in such an anchor of a body, well-built and also graceful. Hair trailing after forceful steps, after bright determination. Energy, whirling and trapped, that can turn into a sprint into a somersault into a perfectly executed kick in some martial art. Hunger, and not just for the things of the world -- the drive to be good, the drive to be more than good, endless bottomless, like there’s some kind of well that’ll never run dry. An existence that is so foreign and so familiar in its warmth, in its disarming gentleness.

And -- him?

Waking up next to all of these beautiful others?

Should have been impossible, should have been an insult to the universe at large. He’s aware of this. He’s known this from the very beginning. Who is he, anyhow, and what can he offer to these others, to these hearts that seem to beat around him? Maybe they can share a few measures of a melody. Maybe they can share a few verses of a song. Maybe he’s only ever meant to have just a tiny hint of them, and none of their entireties.

And yet they cling to him. They haunt him, and he thinks he can sometimes hear their actual voices and their actual rhythms, sitting next to him as he struggles to -- translate. The music that lives in the very farthest corners of his mind, that he has to try and capture, and sometimes one note is so much work and sometimes he wakes up to sheets and sheets of ink-splashed paper strewn around his feet, and he doesn’t know why or how it all works.

He remembers -- the look on his mother’s face, relief and anxiety warring in the wobble of her mouth. Waking up from the daze of anaesthesia and the edges of bandaging wound around and around his shoulder, immobilizing, bracing. Waking up to remember how he had almost been crushed in the pain of his accident.

He’s had the music pour out of him since and he doesn’t understand where it’s all coming from, doesn’t understand what he’s meant to do with all of it. Why does he have to chase the music, sometimes? Why does it pour out of him, sometimes?

And why, why does the music leave him entirely, on the bad days, on the really blank days?

His phone is -- ringing?

Okay, so, first things first, where the hell is his phone?

A familiar name on the display, when he finally turns it up, somewhere in his blankets -- and he can’t help but wince at himself, at the smell of his own skin and the nights and the long long hours of not moving.

He should have gotten tired of beds, after the hospital, after several swipes at rehab.

He’s only ever gotten tired of hospital beds.

This is his bed and he -- sometimes cannot be induced out of it for love or money. Only by hunger, or a bladder full to bursting, or -- well, and then he dives back into the blankets like they’re a safe haven, if there’s nothing but silence still ringing between his ears. If the music isn’t tugging him back to his feet, filling his gut with hooks and he has to follow those hooks, he has to fall into it or else he’ll actually stop breathing.

It’s happened to him before and it’s not a happy kind of experience.

Right now, the blaring ringtones are all he can hear and he -- finally steels himself, never enough, and he swipes to accept the call and -- “Yeah.”

“Finally. I was wondering if you were actually still alive. I beat your high score.”

Snort, small in the shadows of the night. “I’m bored. Find something else and I’ll beat you at it too.”

“Candy Crush,” his brother says, solemnly.

“Fuck no,” he fires back. “Never. I’m disowning you. For the -- ten thousandth time.”

“Twenty thousandth,” and his brother loses the deadpan immediately after, starts laughing, and he can’t help but sigh and pretend to groan.

He can see the slight curve of his own smile in the mirror of the dresser.

Small smiles. Small things. Small victories.

Small thanks: that he mutters into the phone.

“You’re welcome,” is the wry, amused response. “Now go change your shirt at least, and -- eat something I don’t care what it is just eat.”

“Quit smothering me, you’re not even here here,” he says, and he’s thankful no one has to see him wince as he pulls off the clothes he’s been sleeping in for the past few days. He’s lost count. He feels entirely grimy, all over. “Also -- I’m hanging up on you now.”

“Good. Get off your ass. I’ll call you again.”

“Like I’m gonna pick up,” and he hears his brother bark out another knowing laugh as he ends the call.

There’s hot water, in the pipes, and he lets it beat down onto his shoulders. Lets it wash the lank out of his hair, the crusts out of the corners of his eyes, the dried scabs from his cuticles. Lets it wash some kind of fresh energy into his hands and into his feet and so he doesn’t question it, when he emerges from the shower and a vigorously applied towel, and then pulls on his street clothes. The shirt is the only thing that’s different, a more faded black than the rest. Should he be worried about the shoulder seams hanging more loosely? Hoodie, beanie, face mask, and at the very last moment he stops to look in the old tin next to the dish where he keeps his house keys. Earrings, that he sort of has to consciously put on so he doesn’t pinch himself in the clasps.

The end result looks like him, and not quite him, but as long as he’s looking at someone who’s not an entire stranger, when he finds the time to catch a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirrors that he passes -- it’ll have to do. He’ll have to live with it: his own eyes, his own nose, his own mouth. The latter two hidden, so -- no one has to see him smile.

And for an hour as late as this, he doesn’t know why he finds himself wanting to smile, nearly on every corner that he walks past. The kittens meowing in the shelter of a derelict car, pouncing on each other’s tails and outsized ears. The sudden punch of flower-scents, like old rooms full of old paper and old lace and the smoke of pretty dreams, and how strange it is that these fragrances come from such tiny blooms.

He pauses next to an entirely overgrown gate and takes a deep breath of green-spice and crushed leaves, and when he can bring himself to walk on, he feels weirdly happy, in the small secret way that he knows he can never translate into any kind of theme, into any kind of riff. Not for lack of trying. He’s had to learn how to let that go.

Still, he’s grateful for the flowers and for their smells, and before he turns at last into a busier thoroughfare -- the latter half of a night market -- he looks back in the direction of the gate one more time. Glances in both directions at the crosswalk and -- he’s most of the way across when it happens.

Brush of his hoodie against someone’s back: black leather jacket, black-brushed chain of a necklace, bright blue fuzzy ears? There isn’t time to speculate on the -- reality -- of a cat with blue fur. There isn’t even time to wonder about impact, or the impossibility of, because he knows he doesn’t even feel any kind of collision, and yet there must have been some kind of contact because the person wearing all of those things -- and it is only just the one person, how does that even make sense? -- turns around and --

Pins him down with a look.

And Yoongi feels a little like he’s imploding and exploding at the same time.

Like he’s been carrying around some kind of space inside him, small and hidden and dormant and spreading all its thin strands into the rest of him. He doesn’t even know how he’s never noticed. Riddled with cracks all the way through, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Shadows into which the music had maybe been falling away, or the way he’d once been able to see the world in all of its actual existences.

On seeing the man -- a tall man, fuck, he has to rock back onto his heels a little to figure out where his eyes are, and meet them -- a gaze just as shocked as his own, from behind a pair of half-rimmed eyeglasses. Too beat up to be stylish, too many scratches around the bridge and the hinges.

The squint, genuine enough from all the unflattering lines that spring up between those intense eyebrows, but what does Yoongi know about frowning? Even if he thinks he does a lot of it himself -- but it’s not what he feels like, when he gets a good look at the rest of the man’s face.

“Hey! Joon!”

Shoulders jerking beneath the cover of the jacket, like he’s been reminded to move, and Yoongi follows him to the actual sidewalk -- a little bit breathless, a little bit nervous, because how can they both have fallen out of the world and forgotten that they’re still, technically, crossing a street?

And where had -- Joon -- come from, to walk the way he had and intercept Yoongi’s own footsteps, nearly perpendicular?

“Sorry I ran into you,” and Yoongi blinks, stares at Joon. Who seems to be talking to him. Hands fiddling with his cat-ear headband. “Sorry I was scared by you.”

“You realize that doesn’t make sense,” Yoongi hears himself say. “You realize you don’t make sense.”

“I -- people tell me that a lot. Mostly the people I know now. So -- you too. You’re not different. It’s not strange to hear it any more.”

He feels like he’s torn right down the middle, and he doesn’t know which way to go, what to do now. Reassure this tall strange person, who is telling him these candid things. Smack him first before reassuring him -- or do it the other way around.

Whatever it is, he thinks it might not be actually possible to just walk away from him, and the way he seems to be opening and closing his hands as if searching for words to put together, to collect into some kind of actual sentence that the two of them can understand.

Which never happens because the voice that had called out to Joon catches up and announces itself anew --

In the form of a high-pitched gasp, like -- a theater-stage gasp, a TV-drama gasp, red cheeks and a hand flying up to a chest --

“Holy fuck I know you -- or no I don’t know you but I, I recognize you, in the back of my head I know you,” that not-quite-a-stranger says, and why does Yoongi think that there’s nothing inherently wrong about the broad shoulders or the plush material of _his_ hoodie?

Nothing wrong about how one of those weirdly graceful hands brushes against Yoongi’s clothed elbow and --

Again, that spark of collapsing, of expansion, of awareness, catching in his head.

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence -- what’s the third, Yoongi thinks.

And the answer in the back of his head trills like the chorus he’d been looking for, to complete a verse he hadn’t known he had been writing: _take their hands_.

He’s halfway to reaching for Joon when -- he’s intercepted.

Shock rings down every inch of Yoongi’s skin, exposed and otherwise, and then -- he sees the tic of a muscle spasm in Joon’s jaw, before he reaches for the other man’s hand, too.

Yoongi hasn’t even made contact with him and --

Ghost-presences in his bed, ghost-warmth walking along his, the soft voices that had been rising in chorus with the songs he’s been making, suddenly becoming clearer, and it hits him hard enough that he nearly tips over with the entirely expected and entirely new shock.

Only Joon’s hand, and the other man’s hand moving up to tether him at his good shoulder, keep him upright.

He knows -- their names, their actual names, like he’s remembering them out of dreams, and he whispers the sounds into the spaces around them. “Namjoon. Seokjin.”

No honorifics.

He blinks at that.

He doesn’t feel the need to add them, and that’s entirely out of the ordinary.

“Oh my god,” and that’s Seokjin’s voice, rougher and lower and fierce. “It’s you -- ”

“Am I,” Yoongi hears himself start. The question hangs in his head, hangs over his vision, where the world blurs like he’s falling asleep again, like he’s falling into the arms of the others. The other presences. The other -- people? If Seokjin and Namjoon are real, are the others?

“How many,” he starts. “It isn’t just three. Not just us.”

He knows that like he knows all of the ways another person can take up space in his bed, sleeping, and clinging for warmth. Letting him cling for his own hammering heart.

“Seven,” and Namjoon speaks, softly, still holding on to him.

Which, fair, since Yoongi doesn’t feel particularly like he wants to let go of either of them.

“There are seven of us but -- ”

Blood running cold in his veins, suddenly. “But.”

“It’s not actually bad. Uh, but some people think national service isn’t a good thing,” and he watches Seokjin rolls his eyes, a little, in Namjoon’s direction. “So do I but I’m not going to complain, I can’t change the world by myself. I’ll need more help than just all of us.”

“Good luck with that,” he hears Namjoon say, without much heat.

He thinks.

“Whatever. Someday. As for the rest -- bunch of idiots is what I like to call them. They enlisted early. Like, before this whole thing, this connection, this all of us thing. But they’re getting out in two months. You’ll -- we’ll -- find them then. We even know where they’re going to be discharged from.”

“You’re making a pretty big assumption there,” and Yoongi shoots him a sour look. “How do you know I haven’t completed my national service yet?”

“I do,” and that’s Namjoon talking. Shrug of a shoulder. Smile that threatens to deepen, that threatens to -- show a dimple in his cheek.

“How.”

“Hacker, white hat kind.”

“Bullshit, those don’t exist,” Yoongi mutters.

“No one calls them that any more, Joon, seriously,” and Seokjin’s voice rises into something that sounds a lot like a whine. “You’re a security contractor.”

“That’s worse,” and Namjoon actually pulls a disgusted face, which Yoongi thinks would have been credible if not for the smile, and the way he rolls his eyes immediately afterwards.

“Worse how?”

Yoongi feels his eyebrows start for his hairline, when Namjoon looks away. When he steps away.

But the connection remains and Yoongi now thinks he’ll know where they’ll both be, if they moved away from him. Now thinks he might be able to point to them, the general directions of them, even if they had been separated from each other by the entire expanses and sprawl of Seoul.

“The entire length of the Han River,” and he startles, looks in Seokjin’s direction.

Seokjin, tall and broad, and yet leaning on him very gently and very candidly. Small smile that curves his mouth, that settles in the corners of his eyes. “Before you ask: we did that. We tried that. Where were we before I started to sort of lose him? Not completely, I was always aware, but he dropped out a little, from time to time. It’s a whole lot like cellphone reception.”

“It’s not,” he hears Namjoon protest.

To no avail, as Seokjin speaks right over him: “I -- he was well out of the city, I think. He was headed east somewhere, gods only knew what he was doing.”

“Why does he smell like plants?” And Yoongi blinks at himself, wondering about the question, and the relevance of it to this entire conversation. To this entire night, to be honest.

“I can hear both of you,” and Namjoon pulls another series of unamused faces at them.

So Yoongi sticks his tongue out.

“Oh, nice,” and Seokjin laughs in high-pitched huffs. “Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You probably suit each other.” And Namjoon turns. Hands in his pockets as he looks around this corner and -- seems to pick a direction at random, and starts to walk away.

“The food’s over there,” he hears Seokjin say.

Yoongi eyes the thumb that Seokjin’s got hooked over his shoulder, and decides where he’d rather be. “I’ll eat. I can’t remember when I last ate.”

“You are no longer allowed to say that or feel that,” is the instant response from Seokjin. “I’ll -- add you to the group chat and nag you to eat. I’ll call you if I have to -- I’m really good at nagging, you just wait -- ”

“No,” Yoongi mutters, but he bumps his arm against Seokjin’s and follows him towards -- the glare of incandescent lamps, the smoke and billowing smells of cooking.

Eventually -- it doesn’t take more than half the block, by his distracted estimate -- Namjoon slots into place on his other side and he doesn’t feel like he’s too small or too scrawny to be walking _between_ them; he just feels a little bit warmer than when he’d woken up. Just feels a little bit like he’s found a place in the world to maybe really call his.

Distracted and not really, at the same time, and this feels so familiar. Like -- he’s back in his flat and sitting at the piano, waiting for the melody to fall into his hands, or maybe whack him across the back of his head like he’s currently watching, and as they cross another street Seokjin pulls his arm back and keeps bickering with Namjoon about getting noodles or something of the sort.

They should have been strangers and they don’t feel like that at all: he thinks he knows why Namjoon started this entire argument in the first place. He thinks he wants to smile the way Seokjin is, in the interstices of the lack of logic or even anything resembling reason, as they finally start to wade through the last of the late-night crowds.

With the rumble of his stomach he learns that Namjoon will not eat seafood and that Seokjin makes a point out of trying everything once, regardless of actual taste or texture.

“You’re either very brave or food makes you go insane,” he mutters, and Namjoon’s answering bark of laughter makes several stall-owners glance at him like he’s suddenly sprouted a second head, which -- Yoongi can so relate.

“I don’t always regret it,” is Seokjin’s answer, nose stuck firmly in the air.

“Translation, when he regrets it we all do -- so maybe I should apologize on his behalf, for if and when it happens again,” he hears Namjoon say.

He thinks he’s almost familiar with the fond expression of him -- but not with how it seems to be directed at his own self.

“You don’t know me,” he mutters, after a moment.

“I don’t. And also I do.”

And how does he prove it?

By brushing his knuckles against Yoongi’s wrist, as if asking for permission.

Yoongi hesitates for only a moment before taking that offered hand. It was, is, good to have that choice to refuse: but right now he’s glad he didn’t. He’s glad he let Namjoon in -- because now he knows more than just the impression of the tattoos that wind all the way up Namjoon’s arms. More than just the cramp in his left wrist from another long night of coding, and then a little writing at the end of those hours.

The faces of the others, four more presences to look for, to look forward to. The supplies list that lives somewhere in the back of Seokjin’s mind, which isn’t just about keeping a well-stocked kitchen, or a clean house. (What kind of house is it where they have to be ready to -- rebuild an entire home theater from scratch? What is it that they actually do?) A bed surrounded by heaps of books.

“That got your interest,” and Namjoon’s laugh is interrupted when Seokjin thrusts a bowl of noodles in bean sauce at him. “I’d like to see yours too. Or -- should I say -- I’d like to listen to what you’ve got?”

“I guess you know where I live already?” He’s not quite asking, he knows that; he’s just -- trying to feel out this connection. The shapes of it, the links of it, the breadth of it -- it’s new to him, it’s a little bit confusing, especially as he now realizes that he’s getting a distinct feeling of someone unlacing his boots when -- he’s not wearing boots.

“Must be time to turn in,” and that’s Seokjin, tilting his head in the direction of the nearby park, and the nearest set of empty benches. “You feel that, don’t you? Shoes. But I can feel how cold it is, too, where they are. I hate being cold.”

“I can tell,” Yoongi says. “Where do they even make hoodies in -- not your size? How is that too big for _you_?”

“I can get you some if you want,” and there’s a silly sweet smile playing on Seokjin’s mouth for a moment, before he eyes one of the bowls he’s picked up in foraging through the night-market, and applies himself to -- huge mouthfuls of some kind of fried rice.

Thank goodness he doesn’t attempt to talk with his mouth full, Yoongi thinks. “I was planning to buy a dozen more, for when they come back, or I’ll wind up getting all of mine stolen and I don’t like that.”

“You know why JK steals all of your stuff,” and Namjoon snorts, disrupting the thin threads of steam curling up from the cup in his hand.

“And it’s fun to shout at him,” is the prim and swift response, between bites of shrimp roll.

“I think I want an introduction now,” Yoongi says, and he doesn’t even know why he feels the need to pass the container of rolled omelet over to Namjoon before he can start to reach for it. “At least I want to know their names. And are there only seven of us? Did you say seven?”

“Seven, yes. And also no I don’t know where you live. Not the specifics,” and Namjoon shrugs and plows on, though not without snatching a lamb skewer from Seokjin’s side of the table first. “You tell us, Yoongi, when you think it’s okay for us to know.”

“If I don’t,” he starts.

“That will make looking for you a little tricky, but we’ll manage.” That’s Seokjin, who’s looking in the other containers, maybe for leftovers. Light flashing onto the angles of his face from his phone, which he shortly turns in Yoongi’s direction. “And those are the others.”

Four different smiles and yet every single one clashes with the not-quite-fitting fatigues. Faded bruises on at least one of them. Yoongi shrugs past the memories of long long long hours of hurry up and wait, of pointless drills and dry lectures and paperwork, and -- follows along as Namjoon mutters to him, helping him match faces to names.

Hoseok, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook.

A -- cluster, is the word that Seokjin uses, and he looks a little pale when he says it.

Some kind of old dread, even if Namjoon’s unsettled thoughts flash away as quickly as they come. “We all took the same breath, the first breath, same hour same minute same second. That’s what makes us a cluster.”

“Used to be uncommon, for an entire cluster to be born in one single country.” That’s Seokjin. “Something must have happened, because there are more of us now, more random and more common at the same time.”

“Something recent. No we don’t know what it is. We’re fragmented again,” and Yoongi blinks at Namjoon’s words, again. “Not our cluster. I mean, the whole network of clusters. There was a word for the whole thing once but I think they’re all trying to figure out if they need to change it now. Too many people know, who aren’t in clusters.”

“So you’re telling me we’re still people,” and that’s really all Yoongi’s got, at this point, snarking and an uneasy curiosity. “We’re still human beings.”

“That might have been the heart of the problem. Being human or being another species or being neither of those things. Can we not talk about this right now?” And Seokjin’s face turns into everything like worry.

When he pushes his food away -- Yoongi reaches for his hand.

And the moment Seokjin makes contact -- the world shifts.

Instead of the smog-mask of the night, instead of the low-level buzz of people counting money, instead of the table full of empty food containers, he and Seokjin and Namjoon are -- suddenly squished together in a very cramped square foot of space, if at that.

The shadowed structures of bunk beds. Fading drift of muttered conversations.

And Namjoon clears his throat, and says, “Hi.”

Lights come on in the mostly dark room and Yoongi throws up his free hand to cover his eyes. Just barely manages to clamp his teeth shut over the curse that he’d meant to snarl at Namjoon, or perhaps at the source of the light.

Drop, too close, and Yoongi jumps again, and: “Sorry. It’s just me.”

He lowers his hand very slowly, and also takes back his other hand from Seokjin.

Who doesn’t seem to mind, because he’s getting to his feet and he’s shaking the person in the other top bunk, ignoring the little huffed breaths he’s getting in response.

The person crouching next to Yoongi is --

“Taehyung,” he says.

Sweet square-shaped smile, and that deep voice from his half-dreams. Or his cluster-dreams. Whatever they’re called. He isn’t expecting the familiar accent, though. “Hi. Nice to meet you -- nice of you to come visit. I know about you. How’s the song?”

He doesn’t hesitate to tell him the truth: “I don’t know. I’m letting it pickle.”

“Like it’s kimchi,” Taehyung says, nodding and laughing softly. “I do that, too, when I make things.”

“You -- paint,” Yoongi whispers.

“And do other things. I’ll show you around the place,” Taehyung says, earnest and gentle and eager, it sounds like, and Yoongi can’t help but lean into him too. “I’ll show you my favorite colors.”

“It’s our place,” and from the bottom bunk that he’s facing, Yoongi spots the small quick wave, firm arc of a delicate moving hand. “Me and Tae. Hi Yoongi. Jimin.”

“I know,” he says, and the smiles come more and more easily, which should have been odd, but --

_Thump_ out of the other set of bunks, and the broad shoulders of someone who isn’t Seokjin press in on Yoongi’s other side. “Sorry. Sleepy.”

“We’re here, waking you up,” he says, and he wants to pet Jungkook’s hair, and he refrains for now. “We should be saying that.”

“We don’t mind.” And that’s Hoseok, draped on Namjoon. “I’m glad we’re all here together.”

“Just for a bit,” and Seokjin is pulling Taehyung and Jimin in to his sides, or he looks like he’s bracing them where they’re swaying, their breaths still pitched slow and deep.

“Where are you, and how -- ” Jimin starts, but doesn’t get far because he yawns and then turns into Seokjin’s shoulder.

Namjoon’s eyes on him, and then Seokjin’s.

Yoongi says, “I guess it was time for us to meet.”

And he aches for the reality of them all, all of them or one of them or some of them, in his bed: but this new thing is the next best possibility.

So he tugs Jungkook closer and -- holds his breath for the end of this moment -- and for the beginning of them, all of them, all of the missing pieces he never even knew he was trying to find.

Reality, if a temporary shadow of it -- the real and actual _them_. The entirety of the others.

Some days he can tell: some days he can actually taste and smell and feel and _know_, and now he has all of them. Almost all of them. Missing only the time and the truth of them all, the actualities of each of them.

“Let me get there,” he whispers, in the moment that the four others drop away.

“Let’s get there together.”

Yoongi nods, and leans on Namjoon, and takes Seokjin’s hand again, back on the bench, and says, “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please be kind when you review, and come talk to me about these boys and their cluster!  
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